I AM ADVISED by my publishers that this book is to be included in
their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly warning
gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it may be
in effect, its intention is perfectly serious; and, even if it were other-
wise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly in dialect must
have its solemn, not to say melancholy features. With respect to
the Folk-Lore series, my purpose has been to preserve the legends
in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently to the
quaint dialect - if, indeed, it can be called a dialect - through
the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic
history of every Southern family; and I have endeavored to give to
the whole a genuine flavor of the old plantation.

Each legend has its variants, but in every instance I have retained
that particular version which seemed to me to be the most charac-
teristic, and have given it without embellishment and without
exaggeration. The dialect, it will be observed, is wholly different
from that of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants,
and different also from the intolerable misrepresentations of the
minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine. Nevertheless,
if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid hints oŁ the really
poetic imagination of the Negro; if it fails to embody the quaint
and homely humor which was his most prominent characteristic; if
it does not suggest a certain picturesque sensitiveness - a curious
exaltation of mind and temperament not to be defined by words -
then I have reproduced the form of the dialect merely, and not the
essence, and my attempt may be accounted a failure. At any rate,
I trust I have been successful in presenting what may be, at least to
a large portion of American readers, a new and by no means unat-
tractive phase of Negro character - a phase which may be consid-
ered a curiously sympathetic supplement to Mrs. Stowe's wonderful
defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me
hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the
eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of
the Southern slaveowner, and defended him.

A number of the plantation legends originally appeared in the
columns of a daily newspaper - The Atlanta Constitution - and
in that shape they attracted the attention of various gentlemen who
were kind enough to suggest that they would prove to be valuable
contributions to myth-literature. It is but fair to say that ethno-
logical considerations formed no part of the undertaking which has
resulted in the publication of this volume. Professor J. W. Powell,
of the Smithsonian Institution, who is engaged in an investigation
of the mythology of the North American Indians, informs me that
some of Uncle Remus's stories appear in a number of different
languages, and in various modified forms, among the Indians; and
he is of the opinion that they are borrowed by the Negroes from
the red men. But this, to say the least, is extremely doubtful, since
another investigator (Mr. Herbert H. Smith, author of Brazil and
the Amazons), has met with some of these stories among tribes of
South American Indians, and one in particular he has traced to
India, and as far east as Siam. Mr. Smith has been kind enough to
send me the proof sheets of his chapter on "The Myths and Folk-
Lore of the Amazonian Indians," in which he reproduces some of
the stories which he gathered while exploring the Amazons.

In the first of his series, a tortoise falls from a tree upon the head
of a jaguar and kills him; in one of Uncle Remus's stories, the
terrapin falls from a shelf in Miss Meadows's house and stuns the
fox, so that the latter fails to catch the rabbit. In the next, a jaguar
catches a tortoise by the hind leg as he is disappearing in his hole;
but the tortoise convinces him he is holding a root, and so escapes;
Uncle Remus tells how the fox endeavored to drown the terrapin,
but turned him loose because the terrapin declared his tail to be
only a stump root. Mr. Smith also gives the story of how the tor-
toise outran the deer, which is identical as to incident with Uncle
Remus's story of how Brer Tarrypin outran Brer Rabbit. Then
there is the story of how the tortoise pretended that he was stronger
than the tapir. He tells the latter he can drag him into the sea, but
the tapir retorts that he will pull the tortoise into the forest and
kill him besides. The tortoise thereupon gets a vine stem, ties one
end around the body of the tapir, and goes to the sea, where he ties
the other end to the tail of a whale. He then goes into the wood,
midway between them both, and gives the vine a shake as a signal
for the pulling to begin. The struggle between the whale and tapir
goes on until each thinks the tortoise is the strongest of animals.
Compare this with the story of the terrapin's contest with the bear,
in which Miss Meadows's bed cord is used instead of a vine stem.

One of the most characteristic of Uncle Remus's stories is that in
which the rabbit proves to Miss Meadows and the girls that the
fox is his riding horse. This is almost identical with a story quoted
by Mr. Smith, where the jaguar is about to marry the deer's
daughter. The cotia - a species of rodent - is also in love with
her, and he tells the deer that he can make a riding horse of the
jaguar. "Well," says the deer, "if you can make the jaguar carry you,
you shall have my daughter." Thereupon the story proceeds pretty
much as Uncle Remus tells it of the fox and the rabbit. The cotia
finally jumps from the jaguar and takes refuge in a hole, where an
owl is set to watch him, but he flings sand in the owl's eyes and
escapes. In another story given by Mr. Smith, the cotia is very
thirsty, and, seeing a man coming with a jar on his head, lies down
in the road in front of him, and repeats this until the man puts
down his jar to go back after all the dead cotias he has seen. Ihis
is almost identical with Uncle Remus's story of how the rabbit
robbed the fox of his game. In a story from Upper Egypt, a fox lies
down in the road in front of a man who is carrying fowls to market
and finally succeeds in securing them.

This similarity extends to almost every story quoted by Mr.
Smith, and some are so nearly identical as to point unmistakably to
a common origin; but when and where? When did the Negro or
the North American Indian ever come in contact with the tribes of
South America? Upon this point the author of Brazil and the
Amazons, who is engaged in making a critical and comparative
study of these myth-stories, writes:

I am not prepared to form a theory about these stories. There

can be no doubt that some of them, found among the Negroes

and the Indians, had a common origin. The most natural solu-

tion would be to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were

carried to South America by the Negro slaves. They are certainly

found among the Red Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African

theory, it is equally certain that they are told by savage Indians

of the Amazon Valley (away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and

Tapura). These Indians hardly ever see a Negro, and their lan-

guages are very distinct from the broken Portuguese spoken by

the slaves. The form of the stories, as recounted in the Tupi and

Mundurucu languages, seems to show that they were originally

formed in those languages or have long been adopted in them.

It is interesting to find a story from Upper Egypt (that of the
fox who pretended to be dead) identical with an Amazonian
story, and strongly resembling one found by you among the
Negroes. Varnhagen, the Brazilian historian (now Visconde de
Rio Branco), tried to prove a relationship between the ancient
Egyptians, or other Turanian stock, and the Tupi Indians. His
theory rested on rather a slender basis, yet it must be confessed
that he had one or two strong points. Do the resemblances
between Old and New World stories point to a similar conclu-
sion? It would be hard to say with the material that we now have.

One thing is certain. The animal stories told by the Negroes in
our Southern States and in Brazil were brought by them from
Africa. Whether they originated there, or with the Arabs, or
Egyptians, or with yet more ancient nations, must still be an open
question. Whether the Indians got them from the Negroes or
from some earlier source is equally uncertain. We have seen
enough to know that a very interesting line of investigation has
been opened.

Professor Hartt, in his Amazonian Tortoise Myths, quotes a story
from the Riverside Magazine of November, 1868, which will be
recognized as a variant of one given by Uncle Remus. I venture to
append it here, with some necessary verbal and phonetic alterations,
in order to give the reader an idea of the difference between the
dialect of the cotton plantations as used by Uncle Remus, and the
lingo in vogue on the rice plantations and Sea Islands of the South
Atlantic States:

One time B'er Deer an' B'er Cooter [Terrapin] was courtin',

and de lady did bin lub B'er Deer mo' so dan B'er Cooter. She

did bin lub B'er Cooter, but she lub B'er Deer de morest. So de

young lady say to B'er Deer and B'er Cooter bofe day dey mus'

hab a ten mile race, an' de one dat beats, she will go marry him.

So B'er Cooter say to B'er Deer: "You has got mo' longer legs

dan I has, but I will run you. You run ten mile on land, and I

will run ten mile on de water!"

So B'er Cooter went an' git nine er his fam'ly, an' put one at

ebery mile-pos', and he hisse'f, what was to run wid B'er Deer,

he was right in front of de young lady's do', in de broom-grass.

Dat mornin' at nine o'clock, B'er Deer he did met B'er Cooter

at de fus mile-pos', wey dey was to start fum. So he call: "Well,

B'er Cooter, is you ready? Go long!" As he git on to de nex'

mile-pos', he say: "B'er Cooter!" B'er Cooter say: "Hullo!" B'er

Deer say: "You dere?" B'er Cooter say: "Yes, B'er Deer, I dere

too."

Nex' mile-pos' he jump, B'er Deer say: "Hullo, B'er Cooter!"

B'er Cooter say: "Hullo, B'er Deerl you dere too?" B'er Deer say:

"Kil it look like you gwine fer tie me; it look like we gwine fer

de gal tie!"

When he git to de nine-mile posw he tought he git dere fus,

'cause he mek two jump; so he holler: "B'er Cooter!" B'er

Cooter answer: "You dere too?" B'er Deer say: "It look like you

gwine tie me." B'er Cooter say: "Go long, B'er Deer. I git dere

in due season time," which he does, and wins de race.

The story of the Rabbit and the Fox, as told by the Southern
Negroes, is artistically dramatic in this: it progresses in an orderly
way from a beginning to a well-defined conclusion, and is full of
striking episodes that suggest the culmination. It seems to me to
be to a certain extent allegorical, albeit such an interpretation may
be unreasonable. At least it is a fable thoroughly characteristic of
the Negro; and it needs no scientific investigation to show why he
selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals, and
brings him out victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and
the fox. It is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not
malice, but mischievousness. It would be presumptuous in me to
offer an opinion as to the origin of these curious myth-stories; but,
if ethnologists should discover that they did not originate with the
African, the proof to that effect should be accompanied with a good
deal of persuasive eloquence.

Curiously enough, I have found few Negroes who will acknowl-
edge to a stranger that they know anything of these legends; and
yet to relate one of the stories is the surest road to their confidence
and esteem. In this way, and in this way only, I have been enabled
to collect and verify the folklore included in this volume. There is
an anecdote about the Irishman and the rabbit which a number of
Negroes have told to me with great unction, and which is both
funny and characteristic, though I will not undertake to say that it
has its origin with the blacks. One day an Irishman who had heard
people talking about "mares' nests" was going along the big road
- it is always the big road in contradistinction to neighborhood
paths and by-paths, called in the vernacular "nigh-cuts" - when he
came to a pumpkin-patch. The Irishman had never seen any of this
fruit before, and he at once concluded that he had discovered a
veritable mare's nest. Making the most of his opportunity, he
gathered one of the pumpkins in his arms and went on his way.
A pumpkin is an exceedingly awkward thing to carry, and the
Irishman had not gone far before he made a misstep, and stumbled.
The pumpkin fell to the ground, rolled down the hill into a "brush-heap,"
and, striking against a stump, was broken. Thestory con-
tinues in the dialect: "W'en de punkin roll in de bresh-heap, out
jump a rabbit; en soon's de I'shmuns see dat, he take atter de rabbit
en holler: 'Kworp, colty! kworp, colty! but de rabbit, he des flew."
The point of this is obvious.

As to the songs, the reader is warned that it will be found diffi-
cult to make them conform to the ordinary rules of versification,
nor is it intended that they should so conform. They are written,
and are intended to be read, solely with reference to the regular
and invariable recurrence of the caesura, as, for instance, the first
stanza of the Revival Hymn:

Oh, whar \ shill we go \ w'en de great \ day comes \

Wid de blow \ in' er de trumpits \ en de bang \ in' er de drums \

How man \ y po' sin \ ners'll be kotch'd \ out late \

En fine \ no latch \ ter de gold \ in gate \

In other words, the songs depend for their melody and rhythm
upon the musical quality of time, and not upon long or short,
accented or unaccented syllables. I am persuaded that this fact led
Mr. Sidney Lanier, who is thoroughly familiar with the metrical
peculiarities of Negro songs, into the exhaustive investigation which
has resulted in the publication of his scholarly treatise, The Science
of Erlglish Verse.

The difference between the dialect of the legends and that of the
character-sketches, slight as it is, marks the modifications which
the speech of the Negro has undergone even where education has
played no part in reforming it. Indeed, save in the remote country
districts, the dialect of the legends has nearly disappeared. I am
perfectly well aware that the character-sketches are without per-
manent interest, but they are embodied here for the purpose of
presenting a phase of Negro character wholly distinct from that
which I have endeavored to preserve in the legends. Only in this
shape, and with all the local allusions, would it be possible to ade-
quately represent the shrewd observations, the curious retorts, the
homely thrusts, the quaint comments, and the humorous philosophy
of the race of which Uncle Remus is the type.

If the reader not familiar with plantation life will imagine that
the myth-stories of Uncle Remus are told night after night to a
little boy by an old Negro who appears to be venerable enough to
have lived during the period which he describes - who has nothing
but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery - and who has
all the prejudices of caste and pride of family that were the natural
results of the system; if the reader can imagine all this, he will find
little difficulty in appreciating and sympathizing with the air of
affectionate superiority which Uncle Remus assumes as he proceeds
to unfold the mysteries of plantation lore to a little child who is the
product of that practical reconstruction which has been going on
to some extent since the war in spite of the politlcians. Uncle
Remus describes that reconstruction in his "A Story of the War,"
and I may as well add here for the benefit of the curious that that
story is almost literally true.